PrairiePundit

  Epoch Times: Arkansas Bill Creates Antibody Exemption for Biden Vaccine Mandates There is evidence that people who recovered from Covid have the antibodies that resist reinfection that may be more effective than the vaccine .  An Israeli study found that to be the case. The Biden administration tends to ignore these scientific findings.

 National Review: Special Counsel John Durham , the attorney tapped by the Trump administration to audit the Russia investigation, has reportedly handed down a new set of subpoenas, including to a law firm with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. The grand jury subpoenas for documents were issued earlier this month, according to CNN , after Durham charged Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann for knowingly making a false statement to the FBI. Investigators from the special counsel’s office are seeking additional documents from Sussmann’s former law firm, Perkins Coie, an indication that Durham may be looking to add to Sussmann’s charges or to bring cases against other defendants. Durham was reportedly investigating whether Sussmann lied to the FBI regarding who — if anyone — he was representing when he told the Bureau about communications between the Trump Organization and the Kremlin-connected Russian bank Alfa Bank. ... I suspect Durham is seeking law firm records and no...

 Stephen Green: Presidentish Joe Biden wants to put an actual Communist — self-proclaimed “radical” Cornell University law school professor Saule Omarova — in charge of the nation’s banking system. Omarova graduated from the Soviet Union’s Moscow State University in 1989 on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship, according to the  Wall Street Journal . As recently as 2019, she was still praising the USSR’s economic system as in some ways superior to our own. “Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best.'” As a matter of fact, I will say what I will about the old USSR. Teachers there were paid the same as doctors — because medicine was considered “women’s work” and both were paid crap numbers of worthless rubles. Sexism and central mismanagement, all in one murderously totalitarian package. There’s a reason the USSR is defunct and the U.S. isn’t — at least until Omarova gets her way. Omarova’s goal is the eventual elimi...

 Jazz Shaw: One theme that the Democrats have been pushing for years now is the idea that Republican lawmakers have been trying to suppress turnout by passing “restrictive” voting laws that disenfranchise people and make it more difficult to register and vote. They’ve received a lot of support from most of the mainstream media, where talking heads repeat these allegations as if they are factual. All of this is being done despite the fact that many red states that have passed new, widely criticized voting laws (such as Georgia) have more permissive voting procedures and more days of early voting than some blue states like New York. But the one question I keep trying to raise is where we might find all of these people who are having trouble voting? And is the public really buying this malarkey? A new poll from Morning Consult may give us a good indication as to the answer to the second question.  As the Washington Examiner reports , that question was put to the public. And contr...

  Hot Air: Texas poll: Biden's overall job approval drops to 32%, handling of the border falls to 20/71 ...   What’s noteworthy about the Q-poll isn’t just his overall decline in Texas, it’s his poor numbers among Latinos specifically. The one silver lining for Republicans in last November’s presidential results was that Trump made a dent in Dems’ hold on the Hispanic vote, particularly in counties along the Texas/Mexico border. Democrats are desperate to get those voters back. These new numbers suggest Biden is moving in the opposite direction. It’s not all because of his border policies either. But it’s partly because of his border policies. ... According to last year’s  exit poll in Texas , Biden beat Trump among Latino voters 58/41. In Quinnipiac’s new poll, his job approval within that group is down to 37/55.... ... That’s a 29/47 approval rating on immigration among Texas Latinos. The  same poll  had his overall approval within that demographic at 35/54.....

 Andrea Widburg: ... These embarrassments to America's long and honorable military history, as I said, were desperate to place blame anywhere but on themselves.  Milley (as was to be expected) was the worst.  He  insisted  that Americans abandoned in Afghanistan would have "been at greater risk" if the military had stayed "past the 31st." But here's the thing about all these guys saying that Biden is to blame (which I'm sure he is): why did they go along with a plan that they now claim they knew in advance would be disastrous?  And having gone along with it, perhaps in the naïve and unfounded belief that they could somehow prevent the worst from happening, why did they try to spin defeat as success? And when they got called out on it by a single brave Marine lieutenant colonel, why did they go full Soviet, sending him to a psychiatrist and the brig, rather than doing what any decent Japanese politico would have done under these circumstances ...

 Rajan Laad: ... The implicit message being conveyed is that they are brimming boundless compassion and ceaseless empathy who only want happiness and prosperity for all. Compassion undeniably is a virtue and charity is always noble. But philanthropy by its very definition is an effort of charity by paying from your own pocket. It would have been highly commendable if the advocates of open borders had open the doors of their spacious homes and personally paid for the welfare of these individuals. This is not what the modern left is doing. They encourage and facilitate illegal immigration but it is at the expense of taxpayers. Yet they have the audacity to brand a section of these taxpayers as bigoted, racist, and close-minded xenophobes who can’t even tolerate neighbors accidentally setting foot on their lawn. ... Instead of dumping illegals in Texas and Florida cities, why not dump them in the middle of Washington DC and Delaware where the President has houses.  He probab...

  Texas, like Florida, has found a way around Biden's restrictions on the use of this treatment. It is an effective treatment for the virus. It is possible that Biden's restrictions on its use were political since it has been a popular treatment alternative in the Red States.

  Fox News: Biden losing America's trust, polls show   Loss in trust could stem from Biden’s poor responses to mounting crises battering his administration Biden's decline in cognitive ability has become too big to ignore for most voters.   For many of us, he never seemed that bright, to begin with. See, also: Most Americans no longer trust Biden’s COVID information: Poll

 Brandon Morse: In the midst of Democrat softballs constantly being thrown his way, Gen. Mark Milley was finally confronted with someone who didn’t come to play around. Florida Republican Matt Gaetz brutalized Milley in a way that had the general looking very uncomfortable in his seat. What’s more, Gaetz swung and hit President Joe Biden square in the process. Gaetz came swinging out of the gate immediately at Milley, making it clear that his call about pulling out of Afghanistan was a massive error. “You really blew that call didn’t you, General?” asked Gaetz. Milley began to respond that they were in a “strategic stalemate” but Gaetz cut him off and pointed out that Milley focused more on writing his book “Peril” with investigative journalist Bob Woodward than he spent analyzing “the very likely prospect” that the Afghanistan government would be overrun and toppled by the Taliban should the U.S. have departed as we did. Milley denied this but Gaetz was immediately back on him. “O...

 Andrew McCarthy: The photographs that should be seared in your memory from the Del Rio debacle are not those of Border Patrol agents on horseback, defamed by their federal superiors — and in particular, by President Biden himself — for daring to do their job. Focus instead on the photos of police vehicles arrayed in long, imposing rows on the American side of the river — state police vehicles, ordered to secure the border by the governor of Texas. Does Governor Abbott have the authority to deploy a “ steel wall ” of Lone Star State troopers? Well, he has the raw power to do it, and in crisis conditions, that is what tends to matter. And — capped by White House oracle Jen Psaki’s astonishing assertion that the “migrants” Democrats are inviting into our country don’t need the COVID vaccines Biden is mandating for Americans because “they are not intending to stay here for a lengthy period of time” — the administration’s ineptitude was sufficiently humiliating that Biden hasn’t chall...

  National Review: Manchin Hammers Home Opposition to $3.5 Trillion Reconciliation Bill: ‘Fiscal Insanity’ It looks like the Democrats will be two votes shy of passing their big-spending plan in the Senate.  He is also concerned about the inflation tax we are already paying. See, also: Republicans Get Out of the Way as Democrats Form a Circular Firing Squad Democrats are also having trouble in the House as vulnerable members are reading the poll tea leaves and know Biden does not have the support of the voters for this boondoggle.  And: Poll: $3.5 Trillion Reconciliation Package ‘Deeply Unpopular’ in Swing Districts

  Epoch Times: Workers Who Maintain Supply Chains Warn of Worldwide ‘System Collapse’ Consumers are already seeing empty shelves again in some stores.  I was recently in a store run by a large grocery chain and in the frozen food section, there was not one bag of English peas, and the section that normally has frozen hashbrowns was also empty.  Costco is also said to be rationing paper products again.  Prices in the grocery stores are up 25 % on many items.  The Biden economy is beginning to really suck especially for those on fixed incomes.  I suspect one of the reasons for the price increases besides limited supply is that transportation costs have gone up considerably because of Biden's anti-energy policies.

  Red States: Dem Senator's Assessment of Biden Admin's Senate Testimony Is Searing: 'No One in Charge' ... Blumenthal stressed it was a “moral imperative” that we had to evacuate the people left stranded, yet the State Department pointed at the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense pointed at the White House. No one seemed to be addressing the real and continuing question that is an imperative right now, he said. His point was a critical one. Even now, almost a month and a half after Kabul fell, almost a month since the withdrawal, we still have people stranded with no coordination and no answers from the Biden team, with rescues left up to private individuals and members of Congress to figure out on their own. That is just shameful. It should be the first thing that is on the mind of everyone in the administration. But it isn’t. There is much more and other Democrats were just as appalled by the Afghan clusterf***. 

  National Review: More Than 100 Americans Being Denied Entry into U.S. after Evacuating Afghanistan Various points of entry have been denied them.  Meanwhile, the Biden administration is allowing anyone who comes across the Mexican border into the country regardless of health concerns. 

  Washington Examiner: Redistricting maps drawn by Republicans in Georgia and Texas are being criticized by some conservatives as too timid and a failure to maximize GOP gains in Congress in 2022, a break for Democrats heading into the midterm elections. The proposal for new congressional boundaries in Texas does not appear to squeeze Democrats, or create new majority-Republican seats, to the extent analysts thought possible (and likely) after the state picked up two House seats in reapportionment. Georgia neither gained nor lost seats. But the expectations were that Republicans there would redraw the map to bolster the party’s congressional delegation to counter the Democrats’ growing strength in the state, especially around Atlanta. The Democratic Party’s thin House majority remains in jeopardy heading into next year’s down-ballot contests. But these proposals out of Georgia and Texas could spare the party from losses that had been considered all but certain. “Republican leaders ...

 Vodka Pundit: ... So we don’t need to ask you to trust us when we say we have read some deeply stupid stuff. But nothing so stupid as White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki trying to explain exactly how economics doesn’t work to the White House Fluff Corps. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed during Monday’s press briefing that it would be “unfair and absurd” for companies to raise costs on consumers in response to the Biden administration raising the corporate tax rate. If Democrats get their way, corporate taxes are about to go up by about 25%. And because it would be “unfair and absurd” for anyone to raise prices on consumers in response to increased costs… …wait, wut? Psaki actually represents perfectly her brothers and sisters on the Left in their belief that businesses are all run by Scrooge McDuck and have secret safes hiding all the money they took away from poor people. With just the right taxes, the money will come out and the poor people will be rich again. But...

 CNN Business: Home heating sticker shock: The cost of natural gas is up 180% The same is true for propane used in rural areas of the country.  I happen to live on several wooded acres in the country and when gas was expensive during the Obama years I decided to buy a wood-burning stove to heat my home.  Cutting and hauling the wood is one of my main forms of exercise at my advanced age.  During the Texas deep freeze last winter we also stayed warm when the power was off.  Even if you have to buy the firewood it is probably cheaper than the price of gas.  BTW, the stove paid for itself the first winter that I used it.

  The Hill: Florida bars state agencies from assisting with Biden immigration policies ... According to DeSantis’s order, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Florida Highway Patrol are ordered "to detain any aircraft, bus, or vehicles that are transporting migrants into the state from the Southwest Border under state and federal law." DeSantis also ordered the agencies to gather information on the identities of the migrants entering the state. “It is necessary to collect additional data and information on illegal aliens who have resettled in Florida from the Southwest Border, the illegal alien population in Florida generally, and the impact of illegal immigration on the health, safety, welfare, and prosperity of Floridians,” DeSantis said. The order closely models one signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) that barred anyone other than federal, state or local law enforcement from transporting migrants back to the border, effectively making it illegal to transpo...

  Legal Insurrection: Marine Who Criticized Biden Admin’s Afghanistan Withdrawal is Jailed   Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller only asked for those in charge to accept responsibility and admit they messed up the withdrawal. As a former Marine officer, I understand what is happening here.   Criticizing the command is a delicate situation at best and doing it publically really sets them off.  I also think they are making the case against Lt. Col Scheller to tamp down a lot of criticism in the ranks for the botched operations in Afghanistan.   When you are up to your ass in alligators and trying to get out of a bad situation accountability comes later, and they are already starting to get some of it from the questions of Congress about the botched operations.  When Senators are asking you why you did not resign when given ridiculous orders by the President you are seeing a demand for accountability that Scheller was asking for.  I suspect at some...

  Washington Free Beacon: House Dems Propose $100 Billion Tax Hike Targeting The Poor   $3.5 trillion spending bill hits American tobacco users and those trying to quit Democrats are the party of government greed. 

 Fox News: Locals in Del Rio, Texas , who spoke with Fox News overwhelmingly supported Border Patrol, despite recent viral images from their community that sparked criticism and an internal investigation. "It brought me to tears," one longtime resident said. "These men are giving their lives, leaving their families, to come here and to secure us. I'm personally very thankful." The resident's wife added: "We've been here for 54 years … I've watched when there was a multitude of people coming, their kindness to them." "They're not bad people," she told Fox News. "They're wonderful people." Images of Border Patrol agents on horseback catching Haitian migrants in Del Rio recently went viral. The agents were falsely accused of whipping the migrants. "We back them completely," the woman said. "We say don't lie about them. Please don't lie about them." Diane, who lives right on the border, ...

 Becker News: “So Trump was right.” Thus begins a broadside in the Sunday Times that amounts to a clarion call for the world: America’s president came to power in an election that was “rigged.” “The American public is slowly waking up to the fact that they are being led by an ineffectually devious, senile halfwit,” Rob Liddle writes . “Donald Trump is back in the lead in the opinion polls. Imagine how awful a president must be if people would rather that sack of meat with mittens were back in charge.” “Soon the public will wake up to something even more unpleasant and sinister: that the last presidential election was a fraud, rigged by big business, the labour unions and, more than anything, the media and the tech companies,” he continues. “If that election had taken place in any other country, it would have been called ‘unfree’. And, as more and more evidence emerges, it terrifies me that the same thing could happen here.” “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the ...

 Conrad Black: As we get to the midpoint between the last presidential election and next year’s midterms, all political sides are expending extraordinary effort to ignore the 900-pound gorilla in the formerly smoke-filled room of American politics. This, of course, is Donald Trump. The Democrats are still outwardly pretending Trump has gone and that his support has evaporated. They also pretend they can hobble him with vexatious litigation and, if necessary, destroy him again by raising the Trump-hate media smear campaign back to ear-splitting levels. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), even as she finds the ground shifting beneath her feet over the administration’s incontinent spending ambitions , is seeing her effort to promote the January 6 trespass at the U.S. Capitol as an outrage on the scale of Pearl Harbor and 9/11 overshadowed by the Afghanistan disaster and the cascade of other blunders and improvidences of the Biden Administration. Apart from a few veteran and some re...

 Epoch Times: Navy  SEALs have been informed by their superiors that they won’t be deployed if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine, even if they’re granted a religious or medical exemption, according to lawyers representing the elite special operations troops and a document seen by The Epoch Times. “What they’ve been told is if they apply for a religious accommodation, they will no longer be deployable,” R. Davis Younts, who is representing seven SEALs and is in talks to take on approximately 20 others, told The Epoch Times. Timothy Parlatore, whose firm represents a number of SEALs and other service members concerned about the vaccines, said his clients have also been given a similar ultimatum. Some SEALs have even been sent home mid-deployment for refusing a vaccine, one of his clients told him. A document presented to the SEALs says that any special operations personnel, including Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen, “who refuse to receive the COVID-19 vaccine based s...

  Seton Motley: China's Slave Labor, Coal-Fired, Mass-Subsidized Solar Panels Dominate the Planet If solar panels are such a good thing, why isn't China using them rather than building new coal plants as fast as they can?  Could it be they are selling them to the West to get them hooked on unreliable alternative energy while they continue to build reliable coal and gas electric plants?  Meanwhile, Europe and California are demonstrating that Big Green does not have a good solution to replacing fossil fuels.

 Charles C.W. Cooke: ... From the moment the Democrats’ plan was conceived, the party has lied about it with abandon. Telegraphing the approach to come, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand contended back in April that the glint in Bernie Sanders’s eye did not represent dramatic or transformational change, but mere “infrastructure.” Trying desperately to counter rumors that Sanders was working on a $6 trillion sequel to the New Deal, Gillibrand maintained that whatever the package ended up containing should be regarded in the same way as, say, a new bridge. “Paid leave is infrastructure,” Gillibrand proposed. “Child care is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure.” Presumably, mendacity is, too. Over time, Gillibrand’s Dadaist argument collapsed under its own weight. But her desire to deceive the public is still going strong. We are now six months into this ruse, and, far from coming clean about their proposal, the Democrats have descended fully into Wonderland. Some of the lies on off...

 Hugo Gurdon: “What those images suggest … [is] quite different than learning what actually happened, determining the facts.” This was Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas trying to have it both ways in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. He wanted to justify his and President Joe Biden’s disgraceful condemnation of mounted  border  officials controlling Haitian migrants, yet also insist that those officials would be investigated fairly. His weasel words betray a poison in our politics that gives as much weight to feelings as it does to facts, even when the feelings are based on false perceptions and deliberate lies. Philosopher Allan Bloom drew attention to this trend, corrosive of good government and moral coherence, in his 1987 bestseller,  The Closing of the American Mind. A quarter of a century later, tyrannical impulses have free rein (as long they come from the Left’s, not the Right’s, tin-pot dictators) to destroy the lives and careers of people wh...

  Epoch Times: Semiconductor Shortages to Cost Auto Industry $210 Billion in Revenue This Year It is not just the manufacturers who are being hurt by this shortage.  Dealers have limited inventory on their lots and have bid up the price of used cars to have something to sell.  Rental car prices are also through the roof.  Mechanics could be the big winners in the chip shortage as they try to keep older cars operational. See, also: Intel breaks ground on $20 bln Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

 Washington Examiner: M ark Milley assured House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that former President  Donald Trump  could not launch an off-the-cuff nuclear strike when she called for his authorities to be limited after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the Joint Chiefs chairman revealed Tuesday. Milley, whom Trump recently suggested is a "dumba**," detailed a call he had with Pelosi on Jan. 8, two days after the Capitol riot. During the call, he told her only the president has the ability to authorize a nuclear launch but that he "doesn't launch them alone." A  memo  Milley provided to the Senate Armed Services Committee said Pelosi's office requested the call with him citing "urgent matters," during which Pelosi broached the question of the president's ability to launch nuclear weapons. “I sought to assure her that nuclear launch is governed by a very specific and deliberate process. She was concerned and made various personal references characterizin...

 Washington Examiner: O n Aug. 18, three days after the Taliban seized control of Kabul but eight days before 13 U.S. service members were killed by a suicide bomber, ABC’s George Stephanopolous asked President  Joe Biden  about what advice he received on leaving a residual force in Afghanistan. “Your top military advisers warned against withdrawing on this timeline," Stephanopoulos said. "They wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops.” Biden replied, “No, they didn't.” “So no one told — your military advisers did not tell you, ‘No, we should just keep 2,500 troops? It's been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that’?” Stephanopoulos asked. Biden restated his answer, “No. No one said that to me that I can recall.” Fast forward to yesterday’s Senate Armed Services Committee oversight hearing. Based on the testimony, it appears very clear that Biden's statement was a lie. Under questioning from Republican Sen. James Inho...